It was Jack who had returned to the room.
At the sound of the voice, grave and pitying, Stephen swung round as if he had been stung.
“You are here still,” he said, and a glance of malignant hatred distorted his face. “I thought you were in jail by this time. You were waiting to take your wife with you. It would have been wiser to allow her to go to the Hurst.”
“Tell him,” said Jack.
With a slow, almost reluctant movement, Laura Treherne drew a paper from under her jacket and held it up.
Stephen looked at it for a moment as if his sight had failed him, then he smiled.
“The plot thickens,” he said. “You have robbed me of my wife; you have, no doubt, some ready-forged document to rob me of my estate. Am I to give the credit to you for this?” Then he broke out wildly, with a mad laugh. “It is a forgery! a forgery! I will swear it. There is no such will. The marriage never took place. You’ve to prove both yet! You are not so clever as I thought. You should have stopped short where you were. You have got her, be satisfied; the rest is mine! Mine, and you cannot take it from me,” and he held his clinched fist toward Jack as he held all Hurst in his grasp.
“Show him,” said Gideon Rolfe.
Stephen waved his hand contemptuously.
“A stale trick,” he said. “A clumsy forgery. You cannot connect it with my uncle’s death. Go to your lawyer—Hudsley, if you will; he will be ready enough to help you—and he will tell you that proof is impossible.”